


Mister Bubbles

by officemonkey



Category: Supernatural, Warehouse 13
Genre: Gen, monsters need clean clothes too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-02
Updated: 2016-09-02
Packaged: 2018-08-12 15:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7939237
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/officemonkey/pseuds/officemonkey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Somehow “help us track a werewolf” turned into “can we trick Jinxie into washing our unspeakables?” There was something about tequila and a dartboard and arguing about the moral consequences of being an afternoon drunk. It's midnight and Steve's still a little drunk but the least wrecked of the three and guess who's counting quarters in the faint pink glow of a giant Mister Bubbles sign?</p><p>Work friends, tequila, and laundry. Throw in a werewolf and it's a fun Saturday night.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mister Bubbles

**Author's Note:**

> An idea that cropped up in another conversation - a little fun for the weekend. Enjoy!

Steve slammed the car into park and yanked back on the emergency brake a teensy bit too hard, maybe. He couldn’t help but be a tiny bit mad to find himself running errands for other people while he was supposed to be on vacation. His sister would have called it a dizzying combination of obliviousness and just-plain-niceness. Claudia would have called it being a sucker. He grabbed the bag of laundry out of the back seat and kicked the door shut.  _ Well, thank goodness for 24 hour laundromats.  _

He’d been on his way back to the warehouse, stopping off every few towns or so to putter around since he had a few days off. Vacation wasn’t really a “thing” in his line of work, so he wasn’t quite sure what to do with himself. Somewhere mid-Iowa, Dean called. Steve Jinks was no stranger to the Winchesters, having crossed paths a handful of times. They became quick work-buddies - he'd snag some cool artifacts; they'd avoid certain doom. The boys needed help on a case and Steve was bored stupid so he said yes. Three days shy of the next full moon, they found - and lost - the guy they were looking for and somehow “help us track a werewolf” turned into “can we trick Jinxie into washing our unspeakables?” There was something about tequila and a dartboard and arguing about the moral consequences of being an afternoon drunk. It's midnight and Steve's still a little drunk but the least wrecked of the three and guess who's counting quarters in the faint pink glow of a giant Mister Bubbles sign? Yep.  _ The things I do for friends,  _ he shrugged and pulled on the door. 

The place was deserted, save for one tragically bored girl flipping through a magazine at the counter. 

“Hey, uh -” Steve started and she hooked one purple fingernail at the wall, barely bothering to look up. 

“Detergent, dryer sheets. Everything’s a dollar.” He dug in his pocket and traded two crumpled bills for soap and dryer sheets, settled in at a washer by the front window. Upending the bag into the washer, he pushed all the clothes in as best he could. He had to fish a couple of things from the bottom of the bag, somehow completely unsurprised to come up holding one glittery lime green satin bra among the last of the dirty t-shirts. He shrugged and threw it in anyway, dumped the soap on top and slid in a couple of quarters. There was a row of orange plastic chairs against the wall and a discarded mystery novel on the little table at the end.  _ Guess I know what I’m doing for the next hour and a half.  _

Three pages in and his eyes were sliding shut, lulled to sleep by the churning of the lone washing machine. The little bell over the door jingled brightly, jerking him awake again. A young guy wandered in, couldn’t have been much older than the girl at the counter, and staked out the washer across from Steve. He was a little guy, dark hair in desperate need of a cut, deep-set brown eyes, and -  _ why does he look so familiar?  _ Steve didn’t realize he was staring until the kid shot him a glare over the washers. 

“Take a picture, asshole.” he grumbled, shoving handfuls of rumpled clothes into the machine. 

“You kiss your momma with that mouth?” Steve shot back. 

“No, just yours,” The kid grinned darkly. 

“Cretin,” Steve muttered and buried his head in the novel again. 

“Prissy bitch.” 

The feeling needled at the back of his brain until Steve glanced up again, utterly bugged by the fact he couldn’t put a name to the face. Maybe he’d seen him on the street in the past couple of days, or - 

_ Oh, dear.  _

The guy stripped off his t-shirt and threw it in on top of his other stuff. Two long, angry-looking welts crossed his back, alongside a fresh scrape that encompassed a good portion of his shoulder and left arm, too. Images started shuffling together in Steve’s head and he sunk down in the chair, easing his phone out of his jacket pocket.  _ The fire escape - they were chasing him through to the back of the building and he’d gone for the fire escape. Tumbled down the last landing and caught the end of the ladder pretty bad before hitting the pavement. _

“You better be on fire.” Dean answered after a few rings, through a certain haze of tequila-driven semi-consciousness. 

“Hey, you know that - uhm -” Steve eyed the kid warily, turned away as much as he could and dropped his voice, “the  _ you-know-what _ , the  _ guy _ ?”

“Yeah, what about him? We got two more days till he changes and no goddamn leads. Why you gotta bring that up  _ now _ ?”

“What’s he look like again?” Steve listened to Dean haul himself upright, papers shuffling. The guy slid into a plain black hoodie and hopped up on another machine, thumping his heel against the metal occasionally. Every time he caught Steve staring, he flipped him the bird in a new and interesting way. He was up to pretending to pick his nose. 

“Five-six, buck-twenty, brown hair, brown eyes. Tim something-or-other is the name the cops got after the last attack.”

“Tim?” Steve repeated back. The kid’s head shot up at the name. Steve swallowed hard. “Uh, thanks, Dean.”

“Can I ask why this is all of a sudden super-important?” Suspicion crept in around the edges of half-asleep. “Did you - son of a  _ bitch!  _ You found the little motherfucker, didn’t you?”

“Hey, now,” Steve couldn’t help his reflexive response, even given the situation, “keep it clean.” 

“Fine, altar boy - are you or are you not in the same room with our little puppy-friend?” 

The kid - Tim - hadn’t looked away yet. Neither had Steve. Even Bored Laundromat Girl was looking up. 

“Gotta go,” he dropped the call abruptly. The washing machine buzzer broke the silence and Steve jumped a little. He ran his fingers across the handle of the hunting knife inside his jacket, flipped the snap off the sheath, just in case. Tried to be as nonchalant as the situation allowed, shoveling wet clothes into one of the wire carts. He kept the cart between them, made his way past Tim’s swinging sneakers and opened one of the dryers against the wall. 

“Hey - don’t I know you from somewhere?” Steve smiled a little, ran through a million different scenarios in the back of his head, looking for one that didn’t end with him bleeding in a dumpster.

“Dunno, you from around here?” Tim shrugged, dropping his gaze to the floor all of a sudden. Up close, Steve noticed a few things. One, the kid looked like he was about to hurl. Recognition went both ways. Two, a thin leather bracelet circled his wrist. Dangling from it was the weirdest little silver charm. Looked like a tooth of some kind, very shiny and  _ very _ pointy. 

“Just passing through,” His phone buzzed a couple of times. Steve fed quarters into the dryer and backed away again, slipping out the door and around to the side of the building. He checked his phone - two texts from Dean -  _ Where are you?????  _ \- and -  _ Fine. Get eaten. See if I care.  _ He scrolled through his (sadly) short contact list, looking for Claudia’s number. 

“Hey, Jinxie, how’s the Midwest?” She was wide awake and likely caffeinated to the gills, updating warehouse records or poking trolls on the internet. Six of one, half-dozen of the other.  

“Terrible, muffin,” he chuckled, “I need a favor.” 

“Sure, babe. What’s up?” her voice perked up at the prospect of an adventure. “Should I be worried?” 

“Depends. What do we have on a silver tooth? One of the pointy-type ones?” Claudia giggled. 

“Way to be specific.” He heard fingers tapping away at a keyboard anyway. 

“I work with what I’ve got, Claud.”

“Yet I love you anyway. Gimme a minute.” Steve glanced around the corner again, caught sight of Tim still sitting on the washer, and ducked back. The tapping of Claudia’s keyboard slowed and she let out a low whistle. “Babe,  _ are you sure _ you don’t need some backup? Mykes and I can be on the road, like, now.”

“What is it?” Steve leaned back against the wall. 

“Remember Doctor Jekyll and Mister Hyde? Apparently based on a true story.” 

“Why am I not surprised?” Steve muttered. “So what am I looking at?” 

“So, the author, Stevenson has this buddy - Walter - got himself locked in the loony bin after a failed suicide attempt. Doctors there are like, mad-scientist level of evil, start experimenting on the inmates. They get to Walt, feed him a bunch of drugs, turns into a monster, yadda yadda, you know the deal. Well, dude goes on a bender, looks up his old friend Robert, takes a bite out of him, gets caught again. Stevenson survives but he’s bedridden for like six weeks.” Claudia paused for a breath. 

“Which is when he wrote the book,” Steve filled in, “laid up with an infection.” 

“Yep. But here’s where it gets good. Stevenson finds out about the experiment and gets Walt released to his care. The two of them  _ also _ spend all that time looking for a way to suppress Walt’s more murdery side.  _ They _ come across a story about a charm - a tooth from a -”

“Werewolf,” Steve finished. “I think I know where this is heading. Thanks, Claud.” 

“Hey don’t go yet - promise me - super-swear you are not about to get eaten by anything. Otherwise, I’m waking up Myka.” 

“I. Am. OK. I super-swear, triple pinkie promise that I am fine and will not be eaten by anything.” Steve promised, then headed back around front. Tim was heaving wet clothes into a dryer now. His face went a little gray seeing Steve come back in. He pretended to be really interested in the directions on the front of the dryer no one ever reads, and Steve pretended to check on his own clothes. He kept his tone low and even. 

“I know it’s not you,” he said, keeping his attention on the glass front of the dryers. Tim’s eyes went wide in the reflection. “Whatever’s going on around here, it’s not you. You’re trying to do the right thing, keep your - affliction - under control.” 

Tim tapped the front of the machine with his fingers and the charm twinkled in the light. “I can tell you where to find him. I tried to warn him - people are gonna notice. He attacked me, too. ”

“Yeah, people noticed alright.” 

“Like your friends?” 

“Yeah. That’s kind of what they do.”

“How come - why are you -?” Tim glanced up at him and all Steve saw now was a scared kid just trying to get some clean clothes. 

“I’m not a hunter - well, not full-time anyway. Also really big on self-control,” he smiled softly. Tim slid up to the girl at the counter and got a pen and an old flyer for pizza delivery. He scribbled furiously on the back of it, folded it and slipped it into Steve’s palm before hopping back up on the washer. He kicked the side a few more times, then looked back at Steve. 

“He’s been going after my family. Get the bastard.” 

Steve’s phone buzzed again. Another text from Dean.  _ Claudia called. I want to live. On my way to you.  _ He looked up at Tim again, nodded to his phone. “In a couple of minutes, you’re gonna want to make yourself scarce. My friends are looking for me.” 

True to form, it wasn’t five minutes before the Impala rumbled to a stop in front of the laundromat. Tim flipped up the hood of his sweatshirt and grabbed the mystery novel, sliding down in one of the orange plastic chairs. Steve finished unloading his dryer back into the canvas bag and met Dean at the door. 

“You OK, Jinxie?” he was looking over Steve’s shoulder, scanning the room for trouble. He caught Tim’s eye for just a second and started to reach behind his back. Steve quickly stepped between them. 

“Is that -” he nodded at the kid. Steve looked back for a second and Tim slid further down in the chair. 

“Nobody. Just some kid. Laundry’s done, anyway.” Steve shrugged and headed for the door. Dean relaxed and turned around, following. 

“OK, ‘cause Claudia said, if anything happened to you, she would -  _ and I quote _ \- rip off my face and feed it to me. So, here I am, saving your  _ intensely crazy _ friend a trip.” If Steve didn’t know better, he’d think Dean looked a little scared. 

“Claudia has that effect on people,” he fished around in his pocket for a minute, coming back with the lime green oddity. “Oh, and I found your bra. Pegged you for more of a sky-blue person myself.” 

“Fuck you, Jinxie,” Dean snatched it from his hand. Steve laughed and flicked his ear. 

“Watch your mouth.” 

  
  
  



End file.
